Splash du Jour: Monday

I loved the library. I loved it for its spacious quiet, the way it was possible to discern each step and shuffle and sigh against that soothing backdrop of calm. No one would yell or scream or cry there, and if they ever dared I knew that the tight-lipped wrath of the librarian would come crashing down on them, as heavy and as crushing as the weight of all those books. I loved it because it was a refuge from school, a place where I had only to navigate my way around the ingenious precision of the Dewey decimal system rather than complex and cruel social hierarchies. But most of all I loved the library because that vigorously imposed silence implied an awe of something far bigger than me, than all of us. It showed the deepest regard not for our need to talk or belch or scream -- not for the silly clatter of little children, the gossip of older women, or anyone's gasping for a cigarette -- but for those stacks and stacks of books and the words and worlds that lay inside them.
-- Elaine Beale, in Another Life Altogether --

Have a great Monday!
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